The State of Mental Health Care, recently released by Grow Therapy, offers a glimpse into how perceptions of therapy are changing. Access and symptom progress are merely the threshold; today, people are reaching beyond short-term relief to build the tools and foundation for lasting stability and navigate life's transitions more independently

This analysis comes as Grow surpasses 15 million patient-care hours, and looks at year-over-year trends between 2024 and 2025 using Grow's internal, anonymized platform data alongside a nationally representative survey of 1,000+ U.S. adults, conducted by YouGov in November 2025.

Therapy is moving upstream

Anxiety and depression remain the two most common reasons Americans seek care, but beyond that people have other specific needs and are increasingly searching for a match with precision. The fastest-growing reason people sought therapy on Grow was life transitions, up 168% year-over-year. Close behind were coping skills (+152%), trauma and PTSD (+152%), insomnia and sleep (+151%), parenting (+145%), and postpartum concerns (+128%).

What makes that list noteworthy is that much of it isn't a set of diagnoses; it's a set of chapters. A career change. A new baby. A stretch of sleepless nights. The ordinary but straining passages of adult life. People are increasingly reaching out for support before something breaks: to build skills, navigate change, and strengthen the foundations of their lives rather than only repair the damage after the fact.

Progress arrives faster than people expect

One of the most persistent myths about therapy is that it's an open-ended commitment with hazy returns: years on a couch before anything shifts. That is not what everyone is experiencing. Among therapy-going survey respondents who experienced improvement, more than two-thirds noticed positive changes within their first nine sessions. For 28%, it took four sessions or fewer.

Just as striking is what those changes look like. The single most common benefit people reported wasn't symptom relief. It was optimism, cited by 38% of those who have attended therapy. Respondents also described stronger boundaries (34%), better relationships (32%), improved sleep and self-care (29%), more creativity (23%), and greater productivity at work (16%).

There is something revealing about this list. These aren't clinical endpoints; they're life outcomes, the kind that ripple outward into families, friendships, and workplaces. This is the real return on mental health care: not just fewer bad days, but more capacity for good ones.

Where people live shapes what they're working on

Therapy looks different depending on geography. Beyond anxiety and depression, the topics people search for vary meaningfully by region. Coping skills were the most common searches across much of the Northeast and West Coast. Trauma and PTSD led across large portions of the South and Midwest. Life transitions topped searches in the Southwest and Florida. Parenting stood out in Utah. And insomnia was especially common in Wisconsin and Alaska.

There's a temptation in the mental health field to talk about "American mental health" as a single national story, but it isn't. Mental health is local and contextual, shaped by economy, culture, climate, and community. For health plans, employers, and policymakers, that's a practical insight: meeting demand well means understanding what their specific population is actually working through, not just the national averages.

An encouraging sign: Stigma is fading

Only 2% of Americans not currently in therapy cite shame or stigma as what's holding them back. It's a single data point, but it suggests that years of advocacy and honest conversation have moved the needle. Willingness seems far less of an obstacle than it once was. It is a hopeful picture: people are more open to therapy than ever, and effective tools are increasingly available for their support.

What comes next

When Grow started, its founders set out to build the kind of mental health care they'd want for their own loved ones: care that's easy to access, fits into real life, and helps people make real progress. What this report makes clear is that Americans are already redefining therapy on their own terms: as prevention rather than emergency, as preparation rather than repair, as an important part of a developed life.

The job of builders, clinicians, payers, and advocates is to make sure the system supports our people to live healthily.

The full Top of Mind report, including insights on Gen Alpha and Gen X, seasonal therapy trends, and state-by-state findings, is available at growtherapy.com/top-of-mind.

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Methodology: Top of Mind measures shifts in key mental health trends between 2024 and 2025 using Grow's internal platform data, representing 15 million patient hours, and a nationally representative survey of 1,243 U.S. adults conducted by YouGov in November 2025. YouGov data are weighted to be representative of the U.S. adult population; the margin of error is approximately ±2.8 percentage points at the 95% confidence interval. Self-reported survey opinion, not based on Grow Therapy patient data or validated assessments (e.g., PHQ-9, GAD-7).*